


a little bit of sugar (helps the medicine go down)

by Meatball42



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Food, Friendship, Gen, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23718010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: “Don’t you say it, Colonel. I swear to God don’t you say it.”“You did good, Pierce,” Potter intoned.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt & Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce & Sherman Potter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 49
Collections: Flash In The Pan: A Food Flash Exchange





	a little bit of sugar (helps the medicine go down)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneatatime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneatatime/gifts).



Hawkeye dragged himself out of the surgical building sometime in the wee hours, feeling like a deer that had been hit by a car, and then got skinned and tanned. He struggled to keep his eyes focused, but managed an energetic grimace for Colonel Potter as the man came up alongside him.

“Don’t you say it, Colonel. I swear to God don’t you say it.”

Potter rested his hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder. He held Hawkeye’s gaze until Hawkeye sagged and let his head hang on his shoulders.

“You did good, Pierce,” Potter intoned. 

Hawkeye shook his head. “We lost-”

“We were never gonna win them all,” Potter cut him off. He sighed, long and heavy. When Hawkeye looked at him he was staring up at the clouds that hung heavy and dark over the Korean skies.

Hawkeye followed Potter’s view. Who knew, maybe somebody up there was looking back.

Eventually, Potter sighed again. “The mess should have kept something warm for us.”

They trudged down the main stretch of the camp. Except for the night guardsmen, everyone was tucked away, either in their beds or off shift and resting up for the next one. It was comforting, sometimes, how the camp ticked. Everything on time, everyone in their place. Other times it really felt like they were just cogs in the war machine.

What kind of night was tonight? The trenches Hawkeye could feel digging themselves around his eyes answered that question.

But then Corporal Klinger, striding around the perimeter in once-shiny boots, tipping a starched-stiff bonnet at them like some twisted parody of a cowboy, managed to bring a small smile to Hawkeye’s face. He didn’t realize that it stuck around.

“Good grub?” Potter inquired, glancing up from his own tray as they shoveled into their mouths the crap passed for nutrition to the US Army.

Hawkeye glanced down at his fork, trying to figure out what he was eating. “It’ll do,” he answered. He was hungry enough that it didn’t really matter.

He and the Colonel parted ways once they had cleaned their trays. Potter didn’t try to lift his spirits anymore; maybe he knew he’d done all he could, or maybe he was as bushwhacked as Hawkeye was. Whatever it was, it was quietly left til the next day.

He hadn’t meant to wake anyone up as he entered the tent, but the always-creaky hinges squealed loud enough to wake the dead. Frank grumbled in his sleep and turned over on his cot; BJ sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“How’d it go?” he asked, voice rough.

“Go back to sleep,” Hawkeye said gently. “Everything’s taken care of. You’re off til the morning shift.”

BJ sagged, but blinked awake anyway. He watched Hawkeye as he stumbled through an abbreviated version of his nighttime routine. Who really needed clean teeth anyway?

“A bad one?” BJ asked.

Hawkeye paused. No, it hadn’t been, not really. They’d saved more than they’d lost, in the end. The problem was that the losses kept piling up. He couldn’t help but watch the tally in his mind’s eye as it kept growing larger and longer, each tick a young man whose life slipped between his fingers.

“Could have been worse,” he answered.

He didn’t hear the creak of BJ’s cot, and the rustling was just background noise. He’d sat on his own cot, yawning, and startled groggily when BJ sat down beside him.

“Here.”

BJ held out a pristine white box. It was too dim to see clearly, but Hawkeye would know that script, that logo, just about anywhere.

“Where’d you get Junior Mints?” he demanded. The agony of the evening slipped away for just a second as indignation came to the forefront.

BJ grinned, laughing at him. “I have my ways. Go on, have some.”

The box was less than half-full. Hawkeye shook a few mints out into his palm, taking two of them between his fingertips and holding them on his tongue. The chocolate was a shock to his taste buds, and his mouth filled with saliva as he licked the coating off the candies, exposing the soft, sharp mint underneath.

He found himself curled on the bed with his head leaning on BJ’s shoulder, his whole body shaking with silent laughter. BJ gamely tried to hold him up, but they ended up sprawled over the cot.

“Have some more,” BJ offered.

Hawkeye did.


End file.
